They say they found books on bomb-making

Police investigating a Mission District man who has been
posting flyers around the neighborhood urging people to
vandalize so-called yuppie vehicles and upscale
restaurants said they found bomb-making manuals in his
apartment.

But the man says he is innocent and his supporters say he
is being targeted because of his political beliefs.

The suspect, whose last name is Keating, was arrested last
Friday while he was pasting up the latest in a series of
flyers by the Mission Yuppie Eradication Project, which
Keating describes as an underground anarchist
organization, Mission Station police Capt. Greg Suhr
said. Keating was charged with making terrorist threats,
but the charges have been dropped pending further
investigation, police said.

Neither police nor Keating, who goes by the pseudonym
Nestor Makhno, would disclose Keating's full name.

Keating was released from jail on Saturday. He said in a
telephone interview that he is innocent.

"My attorneys know if we go to court we will completely
trounce them," he said.

Suhr said police are going through "boxes and boxes and
boxes" of evidence from Keating's apartment, including
the recipe for making an acid bomb, as well as Keating's
computer.

Anti-yuppie posters by the Yuppie Eradication Project
began appearing in the Mission late last year. The latest
posters, seen on various telephone polls, mailboxes and
utility boxes around the Mission over the past two or
three weeks, call for the destruction of four Mission
District bars and restaurants.

"During the next major urban riots, we must attack and
destroy the following yuppie bars and restaurants in the
Mission," the flyer reads, in caustic but intelligent
prose. It lists the Beauty Bar - described as
"neighborhood enemy number one," Tokyo Go-Go, Blowfish
Sushi and Circadia, a Starbucks coffee shop.

"Be creative. Take action. Don't get caught," the
flyers advise.

"That really made me nervous, because people can kind of
take that to heart and really do s- -," said Aaron Buhrz,
co-owner of the Beauty Bar, a seven-month-old bar at
Mission and 19th streets with a beauty salon theme that
offers manicures and professional make-overs along with
drinks.

"In this neighborhood, they can and they will," he said.

Earlier posters urged people to vandalize "yuppie"
cars, such as sport utility vehicles, by keying them and
slashing their tires - letting their owners know they
aren't welcome in the Mission.

In the two or three weeks since the latest posters
appeared, none of the four targeted restaurants has been
harmed, although all experienced vandalism in the months
prior to that, their owners said. Buhrz, 28, said the
Beauty Bar was tagged some time ago with graffiti that
read, "Leave the Mission or else." Ken Lowe, owner of
Tokyo Go-Go, said his restaurant was plastered several
months ago with about two dozen signs that read, "Target
the yuppies," with a picture of a bull's eye.

None understood why their restaurants - which they view as
a plus for the neighborhood - would be seen as a threat.

"All these merchants down here are normal people, and for
people to say negative things about us without knowing who
we are - I was bummed," Lowe, 35, said.

Blowfish Sushi is described in the anti-yuppie posters as
a place that "brings rich pigs to the Mission and offers
nothing to working and poor people here."

Its owner, Jason Teplitsky, said he viewed the flyers as a
prank by "a few loose cannons."

"It obviously makes you angry that people so
misunderstand what is happening in the world that they
would think that actions such as the ones they're
proposing would solve any of the problems or would even be
relevant to the cause that they're perpetrating," said
Teplitsky, a native of the Ukraine - the same region the
original Nestor Makhno, an anarchist, lived earlier this
century.

"Just because people have money does not necessarily
mean they are evil," said Teplitsky, 30, who insists he
had no intention of abandoning his location.

Keating's supporters said he would not make bombs, would
not harm people and is being targeted because of his
anarchist beliefs.

"(The police) took all his books," said James Tracy of
the Mission-based Eviction Defense Network, who has
known Keating for 10 years. "They basically confiscated
anything that was Marxist or anarchist."

The man he calls a friend is a "passionate, caring
individual" who has gone on record saying that he does
not advocate hurting people, Tracy said. "He's going
after the property, not the people."

But the real issue is not Keating, Tracy said.

"The Mission Yuppie Eradication Project's efforts are a
symbol of a lot of long-term residents' frustration with
the parasitic institutions, and the fear that goes along
with knowing that you and your loved ones are being pushed
from the neighborhood," said Tracy, whose organization
works to help tenants displaced through mass evictions or
hotel fires.

"The issue is the fact that people under a certain income
level are not going to be able to live in The City after too
long. Poor people and the working class are just going to
be out."